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The Senate voted on Thursday to eliminate the use of the filibuster against most presidential nominees, a move that will break the Republican blockade of President Obama’s picks to cabinet posts and the federal judiciary. The change is the most fundamental shift in the way the Senate functions in more than a generation.

The vote was one that members of both parties had threatened for the better part of a decade, but had always stopped short of carrying out. This time, with little left of the bipartisan spirit that helped seal compromises on filibuster rule changes in the past, there was no last-minute deal to be struck.

The vote was 52 to 48.

“I realize that neither party has been blameless for these tactics. They developed over the years,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the White House. “But today’s pattern of obstruction, it just isn’t normal. It’s not what our founders envisioned. A deliberate and determined effort to obstruct everything, no matter what the merits, just to refight the results of an election is not normal."

Tensions between the two parties have reached a boiling point in the last few weeks as Republicans repeatedly filibustered Mr. Obama’s picks to the country’s most important appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Senate has voted on three nominees to the court in the last month. Republicans have blocked them all, saying they would allow the president no more appointments to that court.

Democrats, who filibustered their own share of Republican judicial nominees before they took control of the Senate, have said that what the minority party has done is to effectively rewrite the law by requiring a 60-vote supermajority threshold for high-level presidential appointments. Once rare, filibusters of high-level nominees are now routine. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/us/politics/reid-sets-in-motion-step
s-to-limit-use-of-filibuster.html?_r=0

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
A tyrannical end to democracy.

Barry wanted to 'fundamentally transform 'this country. Welp, here ya go.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
About time. Now if only they would end the fillibuster completely.

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Originally posted by m52nickerson:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
A tyrannical end to democracy.

Barry wanted to 'fundamentally transform 'this country. Welp, here ya go.

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More like a return to democracy. You know were people get to vote.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Because what we need are 2 Houses of Representatives, , instead of just 1. Exactly as the Founders had intended...oh, wait. Never mind.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
That's exactly what the Founders did NOT want, direct voting by the people. Which is why the Representatives REPRESENT the people, and the Senate ( originally ) were set up to represent that States.

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Originally posted by m52nickerson:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
That's exactly what the Founders did NOT want, direct voting by the people. Which is why the Representatives REPRESENT the people, and the Senate ( originally ) were set up to represent that States.

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In people I meant the Representatives, they are the one who will not get to vote.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by m52nickerson:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
That's exactly what the Founders did NOT want, direct voting by the people. Which is why the Representatives REPRESENT the people, and the Senate ( originally ) were set up to represent that States.

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In people I meant the Representatives, they are the one who will not get to vote.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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The Filibuster is a SENATE rule, not a House of Reps rule. With out it, we basically now have House of Reps. The Senate has always been seen as the saucer, to cool things off.

The “Senatorial saucer” conversation between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is part of U.S. Senate legend. Jefferson had returned from France and was breakfasting with Washington. Jefferson asked Washington why he agreed to have a Senate.

“Why,” said Washington, “did you just now pour that coffee into your saucer before drinking it?”

“To cool it,” said Jefferson; “my throat is not made of brass.”

“Even so,” said Washington, “we pour our legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it.”

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_senate_is_
the_saucer_into_which_we_pour_legislation_to_cool/

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Republicans have only themselves to blame for Reid’s ‘nuclear option’

If the Founding Fathers could see the Senate after today’s vote by Senate Democrats to prohibit filibusters of most presidential appointments, they would, of course, be appalled. ”What are all these women doing here?” they would ask. But as for the filibuster reform, they’d wonder what all the fuss was about.

There is no mention of the filibuster in the Constitution. Until very recently in U.S. history, filibusters were rarely used. Half of all filibusters of executive-branch nominees have occurred under President Obama, and it was obvious from the first day of his presidency that Republicans would use the tactic to hamstring the government and block Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, then, had every right to push for changes to filibuster rules four years ago, when GOP use of the filibuster was already out of control. But instead, Reid offered deal after deal to Senate Republicans. They accepted some. They honored none. Instead, the delaying tactics have continued. Frequently they have been used to block the implementation of laws the Senate had passed — the two-year filibustering of the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example.. And Republicans have paired judicial nullification with legislative nullification, blocking a record number of Obama’s judicial appointees — a power the Constitution actually mentions, unlike the filibuster — for no real reason other than that they were Democratic nominees, not Republican ones. (Democrats were guilty of this under President George W. Bush as well, it must be noted, and deserve criticism for that, even if the number of filibusters was lower.)

The result, as political scientist Gregory Koger summed up nicely for my Post colleague Ezra Klein, has been the solidifying of a new order in the U.S. system of government:

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Over the last 50 years, we have added a new veto point in American politics. It used to be the House, the Senate and the president, and now it’s the House, the president, the Senate majority and the Senate minority. Now you need to get past four veto points to pass legislation. That’s a huge change of constitutional priorities. But it’s been done, almost unintentionally, through procedural strategies of party leaders.

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This status quo is unacceptable and had to change.

But Reid never would have used the “nuclear option” without the lemming-like behavior of Senate Republicans. Less ideological GOP members could have voted more frequently to break cloture and force an up-or-down vote, as members of both parties have done, even as filibuster use has increased. They could have stopped the unprecedented number of filibusters of presidential nominations, given that the president has a clearly defined constitutional responsibility to appoint people. They could have stopped blocking duly passed laws. But they didn’t.

So Republicans decrying filibuster reform as “dictatorial” or “a day to be sad” or other hyperbolic claims should look in the mirror. No one forced them to turn filibusters from a rarity to an oft-used tool for nullification and unprecedented obstruction. They have only themselves to blame. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/11/21/republ
icans-have-only-themselves-to-blame-for-reids-nuclear-option/?hpid=z4

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Originally posted by M52NICKERSON:

Senators still represent the people of their states. How you did not understand that I do not know.

You should also learn that this rule change is only for Presidental nominations and that in the begining og the senate there was no filibuster.

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Originally posted by Niki2:

Rap thinks like McCain; one rule change and now "there are no rules".

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Originally posted by m52nickerson:
That was before he ran into the complete and utter lunacy that is the Tea Party.

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Plus let not even look at the numbers when it comes to Filibusters because the GOP while Obama has been in office has set vast new records.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
About time. Now if only they would end the fillibuster completely.

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Because what we need are 2 Houses of Representatives, , instead of just 1. Exactly as the Founders had intended...oh, wait. Never mind.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Exactly, this is where we agree. 2 functioning houses, with men, representatives doing the nation's work - as clearly described in the Constitution..............oh wait, never mind..........the excuse that republicans in Congress have is Obama isn't really the president (of course, they forget that he is in his 2d term, overwhelmingly so).

Question is, where are those men in Congress............seems we have a bunch of crybabies......Waaaaaaaaaaaaa, we want to be president, waaaaaaa


SGG

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Rap thinks like McCain; one rule change and now "there are no rules". The filibuster now can only not stop a vote on nominees. It will continue--and be even MORE abused by the Republicans, from what they're saying, to stop any votes on LEGISLATION. You keep making everything a holocaust, when it's only an argument.

I think damned FEW Senate "representatives" on the right actually "represent" their constituents these days...even fewer Congressmen, and apparently so do the American people, from all the polls. To say this stops them from doing so is absurd. Their actions have nothing to do with how the people in their states feel about individual NOMINEES, they've been quite clear they're holding up the nominations for POLITICAL PURPPOSES. To ignore that is to do nothing more than wave your partisan agena.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:

Or could it be that you're just a racist cunt?

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Niki,

I read every word of that opinion piece and agree 1000%

Now the fun really begins, let the crying and whining begin..............
actually continues here as an addendum to Congress's crying, whining fits.


SGG

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:

Or could it be that you're just a racist cunt?

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Originally posted by m52nickerson:
That was before he ran into the complete and utter lunacy that is the Tea Party.

Plus let not even look at the numbers when it comes to Filibusters because the GOP while Obama has been in office has set vast new records.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:

Or could it be that you're just a racist cunt?

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Rap's response addresses nothing. Of COURSE there are plenty of right-wing nutcases out there insisting Obama "isn't President", they've been in the news all along! We hear from one or two virtually every day.

There's a big difference between a contested election where JUDGES decide who will be President and conspiracy theories about Obama having been born in Hawaii, but of course that means nothing to the right wing.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:

Or could it be that you're just a racist cunt?

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